11/23/2005

Look! Up in the Sky! It's... the Messiah!

Watching the teaser-trailer for the upcoming movie, Superman Returns, you gets the sense you've heard this story even before comics were invented...

Superman's father is heard speaking to his son:

"Even though you've been raised as a human being, you're not one of them. They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all—their capacity for good—I have sent them you, my Only Son."

I was at the Emergent Conference two years ago in Stan Grenz's Critical Concerns course, "Getting Beyond the Plastiv Jesus." He showed a clip from the original Superman with Marlon Brando saying these things. Grenz was the first to point out to me that Supes is a type of Christ. Not the biblical Christ, according to Grenz, in that Christ IS truly "one of us."

While remaining fully divine, Christ is also fully human, becoming what we all need to be.

Thanks for pointing out that this is indeed Brando's voice. I was wondering...it sounded so familiar.